


A heart that bears every fate

by eldritcher



Series: Chorale [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Belonging, Crisis of Faith, Family, Gen, Self-Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27635140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: Gil-Galad is of nowhere, of no time, of nobody, an orphan crowned. It takes him a while to make his way home.
Relationships: Celebrimbor | Telperinquar & Ereinion Gil-galad, Ereinion Gil-galad & Fingon | Findekáno, Ereinion Gil-galad & Galadriel | Artanis, Ereinion Gil-galad & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: Chorale [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2022304
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16
Collections: The Song of Sunset AU





	A heart that bears every fate

**Author's Note:**

> Fragments resorted from old drafts into questionable coherence, offered to you as a gift for making it through 2020. Well done :)

**Foundling**

"Must you stand around peeping?" Celebrimbor asked me. 

I scowled. He was at his desk, peering over parchment, as he muttered and sketched calculations and diagrams. I had been quiet as I stood by the large windows of his chamber, looking down at the rigmarole below in the courtyard.

"It is only Celeborn and Artanis arguing," Celebrimbor said tiredly. "Hardly a new sight."

Our aunt and her husband had gained a measure of notoriety in these parts for their marriage that ran hot and cold. Neither could bear a word of reproach from an outsider about each other. Neither could tolerate each other warmly for more than a mere span of weeks, before matters deteriorated again. Little wonder that Celebrían had washed her hands off them and fled to Amroth's people. I was envious of her, on the days I did not pity her. At least, her parents, despite their peculiarities, loved her. How dared she abandon them?

I turned to my cousin. I was envious of him too. His family, _my family_ , held him close. Even if most of them were dead, those that remained doted on him. My aunt and her cousins took to parenting him in their own bizarre ways, and I wondered what marked him different from me. What marked him worthy? 

He was true-born. His father had acknowledged him. _Prince_ Celebrimbor, the people called him, whereas I was merely Gil-Galad to them. 

He was watching me thoughtfully. Uncomfortably reminded of my aunt's cutting gaze, I averted my eyes. 

"How did they fall in love?" I asked, striving to change his focus. 

"Oh, as anyone does, I daresay," he said flippantly, returning to his diagrams. "Artanis swooned when he came to Nargothrond for Findaráto's coronation. Called him a silver-tree come to life, or something similar. Celeborn was besotted too. He went against Elu Thingol's express wishes and dared Findaráto's wrath to marry her in Doriath."

His face darkened. "She did not even write to let us know. We heard from Findaráto ." He twirled his drawing instrument pensively. "When she wrote to me next, I was a hostage in Nargothrond under Orodeth's rule, and she plotted with Turin to find a way to return me to my father."

I had heard of that tale from Gildor before. Orodeth had been furious after Finrod's death. He had taken Celebrimbor hostage. Orodeth's daughter had caught a child and she would not name the father. He had suspected it to be Celebrimbor, and had flung him into their prison. Turin had taken pity. After the death of Orodeth's son, Finduilas and Turin had written to Galadriel, fearing that Morgoth's eye was upon them. They had managed to send away Celebrimbor with the child, to the safety of his uncle's holdfast. Maedhros had named the child Gildor. Maedhros had named me too. He had named me Ereinion. I wondered if that was his way, to name foundlings and to discard them to others. Gildor, too, had been raised by Círdan. Maglor's daughter too was in Círdan's care. If Celeborn was not who he was, I imagined Celebrían would have been raised by Círdan too. 

"Ereinion?" 

"Call me Gil-Galad, cousin," I muttered. I wanted nothing of that name. 

"Gil-Galad, then," Celebrimbor said, placating. It was difficult to rouse him to arguments. "Why are you interested in Artanis's tales?"

She was married to Celeborn. Celeborn meant to stay in Sirion. 

What if-

What if I had the chance to know her, to know someone from the family that had discarded me? What if she could come to favor me? What if she could-

I swallowed, unwilling to admit to why I had enquired.

"Artanis-" Celebrimbor sighed, getting up from his desk and walking to me. "I love her dearly. She dons a mask outside our family." 

I frowned, looking at the spectacle below. Celeborn and Galadriel were yelling at each other, bereft of composure and uncaring of onlookers. 

"That does not seem to me a mask," I pointed out. 

"Well, come to dinner, then," Celebrimbor offered. "You can assess for yourself if she is the family you seek." 

"I am not seeking family," I growled. "I was merely curious." 

"There is no shame in seeking to belong," he replied absently, his mind returning to calculations and diagrams. I wished I had his ability for complete absorption in a pursuit. 

Meeting Galadriel turned to be a disappointment. She was wary of me, and did not thaw to my clumsy efforts to learn more of her, or to tell her of the familial rapport I craved to build. Celebrimbor kept up a steady, pleasant chatter through the dinner, striving to ease the awkwardness. 

"Telpë?" She said finally.

"Yes?" Celebrimbor asked. 

"Cease. I have little desire for this game."

The glass of wine I held shattered in my hand. I was apologizing, and stumbling to my feet, hastening to leave. 

"Artanis, he is our family," Celebrimbor said firmly. "Sit down, Ereinion." 

When she saw me flinch at the name, she raised a dainty eyebrow, and said, "He loathes the name we gave him, Telpë. He loathes us. He is desperate to belong, that he strives to cling to even those he loathes." 

"Sit down, Gil-Galad," Celebrimbor repeated. I shook my head, rattled by our aunt's perception. My hands were trembling and I felt lightheaded as I made for the doors. 

I wondered if he would come to seek me. 

He chose to stay with her. 

"Artanis, you are not yourself," Celebrimbor was saying, weary and fond, and the care in his voice left me unsteady.

I could have had that, if only my father had wanted me. 

In my haste to get away, I ran to the dueling arenas. There would be nobody there and I could hack away at bags of mortar until I was exhausted, I told myself. It would clear my head. 

My hopes were in vain. Maglor was practicing with his brother, face grim and focused, ruthless in his glide of sword and form. I had seen him in frays before, but orcs and Men with slipshod weapons and poor training posed no challenge for our kind. This was the first time I had seen the deliberation in his attack, and make no mistake, it was an offensive. He knew his opponent's methods well and I could only imagine how long they had practiced together. Maedhros did not bear the sword as one trained by our people would and his technique was unusual. I suspected that he had had to improvise his form after his loss of limb. Who had taught him, I wondered? Had it been my father? They had been lovers, lore said. Our people treated Maedhros as a widower, while I walked among them unwanted. 

Maglor was abruptly on the backfoot, when his brother mounted a brutal charge, unrefined and violent. He spun away from where his brother's sword struck sparks onto the paved floor with a screeching scrape. He was the finest swordsman I had seen, and I had always admired the cold economy of his movements, of how he exhibited unnatural control over every muscle and calculated precisely every strike and swerve. Celebrimbor had once told me that my father had been a better swordsman than Maglor, and I hated the pride I knew then. 

"You will ruin your sword," Maglor chided, swerving to meet his opponent again, chest to chest, sword to sword, advancing swiftly, forcing his brother to pace backwards, before spinning again, using his agility to pin his brother between his sword and the wall. 

"Well, if I ruined it, Telpë would gladly accept my commission," Maedhros said, laughing. "Perhaps one of the modern fashions, as the one Artanis's husband is fond of."

Celebrimbor would accept his commission. Anger seized me. Celebrimbor thought nothing of making swords for kinslayers. And the sword Maedhros bore so lightly, it was my grandfather's sword. It ought to have gone to my father, and then to me afterwards. My father must have given it away, as he had given away everything else for this man. 

"Celeborn is an excellent swordsman, brother," Maglor teased. "Artanis has always known how to pick them. I suspect he could have held me off longer than you did."

"I was merely being considerate of your stamina," Maedhros retorted, dropping his sword, boldly leaning against his brother's blade to press a kiss to his brow. 

He was breathless from exertion. I did not think it was his brother's stamina he was being mindful of. I had heard tales from their soldiers of how his constitution had been flagging, of how he refrained from leading their troops and left it to his brother. I hoped he died miserably and in pain. Death on the battlefield was not an honor he should be allowed.

"You ought to don your armor when we practice," Maedhros remarked then, his hand coming to straighten the lapels of his brother's robes.

Maglor fought in robes. Círdan said that it was because he was an egotistical bastard who knew how good he was. Celebrimbor said it was because Maglor loathed buckles and belts. 

"Have you acquired a new propensity to wound me in sparring?. I shan't be surprised, mind you. You are said to be insane, after all."

"I leave the verdict to my betters."

I hated their ease with each other. In all the times that I had seen them, even when they had been estranged following the death of their brothers in Doriath, they had a softness they wore in each other's presence.

"Wear your armor the next time," Maedhros said then. It was not a request, I sensed. 

"You are afraid that you may wound me," Maglor noted. His eyes were blazing in fury. "How many times has the sword slipped from your hands? I suspected-" he swallowed, looking away, trying to compose himself. The grief stark on his features made me wish to console him, and my heart went to him, even if I was family he did not want. 

"Merely a precaution," his brother was saying. 

"Stop shielding your secrets, Russandol! We must see Artanis. There must be something-" he shook his head furiously when his brother reached for him. "Don't! Don't force me to be reasonable about this! You have fated me to watch you die!" 

"Macalaurë-"

Maglor stormed away, eyes bright with tears. 

Good, I thought. Good, I desperately thought, remembering how Galadriel had wanted to offer me nothing, not even the pity Celebrimbor doled out. Let them suffer. Let them all suffer, dying one by one, and know that loneliness awaited them at the end too. What if they belonged once? In the end, they were dispossessed children of Finwë, just as I was. In the end, they were no worthier. In the end, they were all fools who had run east with the doom of Mandos placed upon them, serving as bloodsport for Morgoth. 

Maedhros stood there, cleaning his sword, betraying not a whit of concern for his brother's pain. This was his care, then, detached and unfeeling. I had wondered how he could discard me, if he had loved my father. Bards sang of him as a man riven by guilt and mourning, but whenever I had seen him, I had only seen cold calculation. Maglor, at least, loved those that he loved. 

Anger rose in me, on my father's behalf. Had this man even wept for my father's fall? My father had marched for him. My father had saved him from the enemy where he had been left to rot to death. 

Emotion drove me forward, as I unsheathed my sword and walked to him. He looked up, startled. We had not seen each other in many decades. He had stopped seeking me out, after I had exercised my spite and cruelty one time too many. We held our communications through Celebrimbor or Círdan these days. When Círdan hosted him at his table, I made my excuses and went elsewhere. We had refined our mutual avoidance to an art form. 

"Ereinion-"

I gnashed my teeth at his unwillingness to call me by the name I had chosen, at his coldness in calling me the name I loathed. 

"Spar with me," I ordered. 

He did not Galadriel's cutting gaze, but he saw too, and I had always hated him for it just as I had hated myself for the relief at being seen. 

"I am weary. You will find me a poor partner tonight," he replied, though he did not walk away. I wondered what swirled in his calculating mind. "Perhaps that is what you need, Ereinion." 

"You don't know anything about what I need," I spat, rapping his thigh boldly with the flat of my blade. 

My rudeness did not ruffle him. He stepped away and raised his sword. I spared a thought to how he held himself, weary and yet determined. Easy pickings, I knew. We had never sparred before, but it mattered not in the face of my strength and spite. 

When our swords first clashed with a resonant screech, I was relieved that Celebrimbor had wrought mine. The Feanorian steel my opponent bore was of superior make and it may have sent to splinters any other smith's weapon. I pressed my strength into my movements, knowing that would embattle him. He was relying on the unusualness of his technique to throw me off, but I had watched his sparring with his brother and knew the marks of it. He did not have my agility or my stamina, and only the superiority of his sword and how well he parried stayed his defeat. When I had him on pure defense, I beat him down, step by step, until I had him backed against the same wall his brother had caught him against. He did not yield as he had earlier, pressing steel to steel, his forearm trembling with the strain of his effort. His complexion was pale from exhaustion, and I grinned at him, flush with impending victory.

"To first blood," I demanded. "And I shall have your sword as my prize." 

My grandfather's sword. It should have been handed down from father to son. It should have been mine. 

The terror in his eyes was striking, panicked, as a wounded animal protecting itself. What did the sword mean to him? As he had said, Celebrimbor would gladly make him another. He pressed back, with the strength of pure desperation, and when we spun away to face each other across the arena again, I realized I had not seen him ruthless before. There was no recognition in his gaze as we fought. I had dared ask for a prize he would die to keep from me. I had fought desperate men before, when it had been their death or mine, but I had not fought him. His technique had morphed, from how he had fought his brother earlier, from how he had fought me until then. He had been _sparring_ , it struck me then, as I sought to gain the advantage of him once again. He had been sparring before. He was fighting now. 

I had mocked the bards that had sung of the white fire of him. Rhetoric and rhapsodies, I had muttered. I used my strength again and again to bring him to bear, in vain. _The fates have given me a heart that endures,_ Maglor had once sung in Círdan's hall. I had not known then the truth of it, that his heart was this madman I fought. This was the man who had held off the enemy on the eastern plains for centuries. This was the man who had saved his brother from a dragon. This was the man who had turned their rout to an orderly retreat from Beleriand, buying time for his cousin to flee to Gondolin after my father's fall. Madness had a strength all its own. 

"You should have taken your victory where you could," he said, eyes limned in the torchlight. 

We fought then, brutally, and I found myself shaken by how he had spared me until then. His hand shook, and his balance was unsteady, but his will carried him on obdurate as he struck away my sword. Celebrimbor was a master-smith, but I knew the many-folded steel that my opponent bore had left scrapes permanent on my weapon. 

"Yield, Ereinion," he said, sword to my neck. 

"First blood," I muttered defiantly. "You have spilled kin blood before." 

He shook his head and lowered his sword, wearied. 

"You are my family," he said, walking away. I hated the unsteadiness of his gait. He was ill. I stepped forward to assist him, but I remembered Galadriel and her cutting words. 

They wanted neither my aid nor my care. 

I was only an orphan they had discarded. 

* * *

**The Glory and Nothing of This Name**

"Any news?" Celebrimbor asked distractedly, when I came to his forge. He was at his desk, rifling through parchments and maps. His plans for the city he meant to build in Eregion. 

"You should take a battalion with you," I told him. 

I was King. 

How could one be a King and an orphan? 

Celebrimbor was kind to me, but his kindness was one he extended to anyone. Over the decades, I had come to understand his nature. He held no grudges, but his memory was a short-lived thing too, preoccupied as he was with his pursuits in working metal and stone. 

Galadriel had thawed enough to tolerate my invitations to dinner, but she had never called me her nephew, even if I had begun calling her aunt. I suspected that she had made terms with me only because she had nobody left to turn to. Her marriage was unsteady. Her daughter despised her. Celebrimbor was planning to leave for Eregion. Maglor was occupied with the care of his brother. Maedhros had not recovered from his last bout of illness and the deterioration had been rapid. While he had his periods of lucidity, I pitied Maglor for having to tend to him as he raved insane. Galadriel had changed too, in those months, as she realized that her cousin could not be saved by any means in her possession. Even if I desperately wished she had turned to me for my sake, I could not spurn her when she was so broken, when I was King, when I had at least the power to protect her from the aftermath. 

We had entered a period of waiting. Elros was confident that Maedhros would not die before the War of the Powers was over, before he could end the Oath once and for all. Elros had faith in a madman. 

Maglor wrote to me regularly, as he always had, even from Himring when I had been a boy. He had been the correspondent. While there was little emotion in the contents of his letters, revolving around the practical as they were, I felt I could see the desperation in him, as he devoted himself to the dying. 

"I have no need for soldiers," Celebrimbor said, pulling me away from his musings. "The last time I spoke to Maitimo, he assailed me with soothsaying. Whatever awaits me is darker than an army." 

I blinked at him, wondering if he was in earnest.

"You have never believed any of his ravings before," I said. 

"Even he must be right on occasion," Celebrimbor said, eyes twinkling in mischief. "I was not in earnest, Gil-Galad. He has been raving about spiders and cannonballs for weeks now." 

"I wish Maglor would permit us to move him here," I bemoaned, frustrated, pacing again. "He cannot take care of his brother in the wilds!"

"There is nothing anyone can do for them now," Celebrimbor said softly. He looked terribly young and lost then, as he continued, "I am afraid, Gil. He has always come back to us."

Not this time. Celebrimbor did not shrug me away when I went to place an arm about his shoulders. 

"He shan't notice a thing," I said helplessly. "He shan't be cognizant of the pain soon. His mind will have fled him before the end." 

"Is that a kind end?" Celebrimbor asked shakily. "I don't want him to-"

He gulped and hastily took his leave of me, shattered by what awaited us soon. There was a war to end Morgoth that we needed to ride to soon, and yet all of us were burdened by another ending. Círdan had been fretful and stressed, constantly seeking me to query if I had word from Maglor. 

There had been no word from Maglor for five days. Elrond had meant to ride to them, but Galadriel had needed him to accompany her to the healing halls they were constructing before the war. Elros and Gildor were away on a scouting mission.

I would ride then. Before anyone could talk me out of the impulse, reminding me of my duties, I hastened to the stables. 

"Ereinion?" 

"Maglor," I greeted him. 

The shack they were in must have been once a robbers' nest. I bit back my demands to have them moved to the palace. I was King. And Maglor brooked none of my pleas. 

"At least-"

"He is awake," Maglor cut in. "You had best go in while he is lucid. I need to see to my snares. Stay for supper?"

"I brought provisions. You needn't hunt today."

On some days, he could be persuaded to accept the rations I brought, if I made no fuss of it. Pride had been their downfall. 

"He is hungry," Maglor said, and the note of fondness in his voice was a soft, sharp, holy thing. "It has been a long time since he has expressed a desire to eat."

And game was Maedhros's preference. Galadriel, too, on the occasions she accepted my invitations to dine, migrated towards dishes of venison and rabbit. 

"I could hunt," I offered, unwilling to claim away from Maglor the few moments of lucidity Maedhros had these days. 

"You remind me of your father now, in how you dither," Maglor said wryly. "Please see him, Ereinion. He has asked for you."

There was no loathing in his voice. He was not fond of my father. I had gleaned that over the decades. 

I entered the shack. 

He rested on the hard ground, covered by his cloak. When he saw my form, he blinked in a vain bid to focus his gaze. 

Starlit, they had called his eyes. Without loathing him anymore, I could admit to myself that the bards and the loremasters had spoken the truth, that neither Sirion's storm-swept skies nor Celebrimbor's steel could hope to match the hue of his eyes. There was no alloy, of the west or the east, no paint known to mortals, that could approximate the peculiar shade of grey. 

"It is only me," I whispered, kneeling beside him, biting my lips to prevent a sob when his hand rummaged about to find my clasp. Nobody had sought me for comfort before. 

"Ereinion. The glory and the nothing of the name is yours." 

"I had nothing to do," I chattered, frightened by the state of him. "Círdan and Galadriel were busy. Celebrimbor is occupied with his plans for Eregion. I thought I had best come by and see you then. I know it has only been five days since Elrond came by, but we had not heard from Maglor, and I-"

I swallowed, stuttering into silence, unwilling to speak what I feared. 

"Most sons are worse than their fathers. Only a few match them. And the rare one surpasses".

The affection in his words shattered me. 

He sighed and I saw that his eyes had finally focused on me. He looked at me as if trying to capture a portraiture in his mind.

"You asked for my sword once," he said softly. "I thought of something that Irmo had once told me. _Freedom's battle once begun, moves from father to son with bleeding sword, unquenchable and unending_."

My father had died in battle, fighting for freedom, fighting for faith, fighting for love. He had not loved me, but he had loved this dying man. 

"I would fight for you too," I said brokenly. "When I ride with my armies to overthrow Morgoth, I will be fighting for you. The oath-"

"Leave the oath to me," he said, trying to smile, though he could not move his muscles coordinated. "The sword came to me from my uncle. He had been my father in all the ways that mattered."

He tried to catch his breath, before speaking again.

"It would have come to you after my death, but I believe I can end freedom's battle without handing you a bleeding sword."

He had loved Fingolfin as a father. The sword would have come to me, he said. My breath caught, as I realized what he had said. I ignored his rambling about freedom's battles. Most of us who conversed with him were dab hands at ignoring his ramblings and focusing on the coherence smattered amidst the rave.

"You cannot forgive me and expect me to leave," I implored. "At least let me care for you in my halls. At least let me negotiate for you with Eonwe. At least let me-"

He looked amused. 

"Please," I begged him. "Please don't die here. I have never belonged to your family. My father wanted nothing to do with me. Galadriel tolerates me. Celebrimbor pities me. Elrond and Elros humor me for your sake. I know what I am. I know I am misbegotten, and that the crown has brought me a measure of affection. I know!" I was sobbing, I realized. "I may be unworthy, but am I despicable too? Why can't you take what I offer freely? Why can't you die under my roof? Is it your pride? Is it your forsaken pride? Your brother will not survive this! You have asked him to watch you die, alone in the woods! For his sake, if not mine, won't you come with me? You have always yielded for him." 

He weakly dragged my hands to his face, to skim his lips along my knuckles.

"I do have freedom's battle to end," he said apologetically, watching me cry for him without taking what I begged him to accept. 

"Russandol!" Maglor tutted as he came in carrying his snares. "Stop scaring the King with your soothsaying. You know very few have the appetite for it." 

I went to help Maglor to dress and cook the rabbits. He was an excellent cook, and he went about it with practiced motions, as if he had done this a thousand and one times before. When the smell of meat and fat reached me, my stomach growled. 

"Apologies." 

"You are as bad as Elrond and Elros," Maglor said absently. "They forget to eat until they smell game, and then they discover their appetite anew. Russandol, rosemary or thyme?"

"Irmo asked for her. In Formenos, the stars fall to the sea. I gave the spider to the giver of gifts. Nine they were, Kings of old. " 

"Indeed," Maglor said peaceably, ignoring the ravings. "Thyme it is then."

I lingered there until the night, eating of his food, watching him feed his brother. They were chatting about whether their father would take a new apprentice in the autumn, because Maedhros had fallen to delirium again and fancied himself in Tirion. His mind wandered elsewhere, and Maglor patiently answered his questions about how his visit to their brother Celegorm had fared. 

"Forgive me," Maedhros said abruptly, in a spark of lucidity. "Macalaurë, Kano, my dearest-" 

"If you are to criticize my cuisine, you have my word that I shall see you starve," Maglor replied, clear-eyed. 

His bravery had never been in question, and it was rooted in his self-assurance of where he belonged. I wondered if one day I could be so, with a heart that met boldly every fate. 

Maedhros reached to clasp his hand, before his mind's grip loosened again, and they were once more speaking of their uncle's latest conquest. 

It was a distorted simulacrum of their lives from long ago, but I had never felt more content. Absorbed in their parody of pretense, as I waited for death, I found my life's hunger abate. 

Come with me. Build your home in mine as you do what nobody has done before, as you nurse your heart to its death. Let me at least shelter you, if I may offer nothing else. 

It is not for you. It is for me. I have hungered and sought in greed all my life until now, until I ate your food in your shack as we sat on deathwatch. 

"Ereinion, you had best return home," Maglor said after the moonrise, after his brother had finally fallen insensate to exhaustion. 

I took my leave of them.

\----

When I returned, I found Elros with our heralds. 

"Summon our seneschals." 

When he had all summoned to me, I rose from my throne and issued my first edict. 

"Our heraldry is the heraldry of the house of Finwë." I took a deep breath to ground myself for the proclamation I issued. "I have decided to alter it. The gold of our sun shall be painted silver, from this day, in all the lands we bear our banners." 

The grief on their faces, I wished I could rip away. 

An orphan, crowned, issued his first edict.

* * *

**It is the heart that bears every fate**

I walked along the river path alone. It was night, alien though days and nights seemed to me in this land of moonless, sunless, starless skies. 

"Ereinion?" 

Feanor. He had not gone out of his way to speak to me before. I waited for him. He had only a thin cloak over his night robes. He must have wandered on a walk as I had, sleepless and restless, unable to forget what had been before freedom's last battle had ended. _In Formenos, the stars fall to the sea_. Galadriel had seen to it. She had heralded dusk on the world that had been and the Gods we had once worshipped. 

"I don't know they can find sleep," I confessed, as he fell into step with me.

I had fallen asleep, only to remember how I had shone in the armor Maedhros had had made for me and left with Cirdan, as I raced across Mordor's vale to meet Sauron's charge. I remembered my people crying out. I remembered Elrond's scream. The sun had been bright on Sauron's breastplate as he struck me down with sorcery's strength. He had once held a prisoner that my father had stolen under night's cover, on eagle's back. I made to rise again, swordless and shieldless, as my father had stood before Gothmog. I would not die on my knees, I had promised myself, before Sauron had swung his mace again. 

When I had woken, terrified, sweating, I smelled the roses of the courtyard and woodsmoke from my fireplace instead of blood and ashes. 

"How can they find rest?" I asked again, frustrated. 

"They have endured worse than a dream," Feanor said circumspectly. 

"The answers-"

"The answers are not to be found," he cut in. "It is not in me to shy away from seeking the truth. I spent nights wondering, calculating, cross-examining. What happened to the souls of my parents? How is Arafinwë, my brother? How fares Nerdanel?"

The same questions had come to me. Erestor, Círdan, Elrond, Celebrían; what of all of them? What of Oropher? Where had the souls of the Edain gone? When the halls of Mandos had broken, what had followed? What of the Gods? Had they been splintered even past soul? What if we were in a cruel illusion of Morgoth's making? What if we would wake one day to find ourselves back in the Void with him as he tormented us? 

"Nobody seems worried," I said hesitantly. "Should we not at least prepare for the worst?" 

Feanor replied thoughtfully, "Life woke beside the Cuivenien, in days of old, on Arda. My father said that the first creations woke by the lake, one after one, and they came to life knowing, without going through stages of infancy and adolescence." 

Círdan had been one of them. He had not spoken of it. He had spoken of himself not at all. Perhaps I had been unworthy to hear his secrets. I chided myself for the familiar resentment. He had not been given to speaking to anyone; the lonely mariner. 

"Life woke beside the lake," Feanor continued. "Eru breathed soul into matter there, they say, by song and light. Ektele, one of my mother's friends, held that my mother had foresight, given unto her by Eru's light accidentally when she had fallen into the lake. We did not heed his fanciful notions. Those of them who had been the first of creation held superstitions of an older time, after all. Ektele was the first to claim that Russandol had my mother's eyes. The fables clung to them, to the broideress and her grandson, to the foresight they claimed he must have inherited."

"Elrond had foresight too," I said softly, refuting his scorn for foresight. "It ran in the bloodline of Melian." 

"Melian is one of the Maiar," Feanor retorted. "Perhaps it ran in their bloodlines." He shook his head. "Let us leave aside the truth of foresight. It is irrelevant."

Was it? I decided to humor him. 

"The lake is the only construct of import. The parable of us."

Feanor's tone was of quiet amazement and pride. He had a theory, I realized. He had spent years pondering our mystery and had coalesced his thoughts into a theory, while the others carried on without a care, while I fretted and wandered in search of answers. 

There was a lake in the woods, still and reflecting the grayness of our skies. No fish thrived there, and the beasts did not drink of it. We had woken by the lake, at different times, some together, some after long years. 

"Nienna lived in a tower to the west of Valinor, and beyond her halls lay the end of Eru's world. She taught her apprentices that the soul endures." 

Nienna's apprentices. Gandalf and Melian. 

"My son was no scientist or craftsman, but he had a fine mind."

His mind had deserted him before the end. 

"In the beginning, when Nerdanel and I endeavored to teach him, we found that he did not seek answers to the questions we knew to ask. He had little inclination to master the forge or the flute or the hunt. He sought the truths we did not know to look for. I left him in my father's care, for my father was more of a philosophical bent than Nerdanel or I. Ektele was chosen as his tutor. Ektele trained him to kill." Darkness crossed Feanor's face. "Ektele sent him to Nienna, so that he may learn the lesson of the soul that endures. He came back to us, relatively unscathed, with a tutor that had deserted Nienna's halls for him."

Gandalf. 

"Olorin. Mithrandir. Gandalf. He was all of those to the world, I hear. I knew him as Incanus, as the master of minds." 

The master of minds. In the void, I had seen the last of freedom's battles, and it had not been fought with weapons of steel or sorcery. 

"My son gave him the flame of Anor, from a seed of Laurelin he had crossed with Ungoliant's venom. I saw it in Valmar, though the wizard tried to conceal its origins. I realized then what my son was striving towards. Morgoth had created the balrogs by combining his light with Ungoliant's primordial. My son had taken his inspiration from that, and endeavored to create the means to destroy the Gods."

I realized where this tale was winding to. Feanor shook his head tiredly, saying, "I knew what he intended. I did not want him to be killed for it, to be thrown into the void for it, to be-" He laughed, though there was no joy in him. "I did not want him to touch the primordial darkness again, for I believed then that only the light of Eru was hallowed. I captured light, with my soul, in the Silmarilli. A bloodline claim, I thought, and I made them swear to retake the gems, for I fancied that would be the weapon of their victory. What did it matter who had physical possession of those gems, as long as the soul endured and remembered?"

Morgoth had been unable to use the Silmarilli for his purposes. Even when one had come to Thingol and Melian, they had not found the means to utilize its power, the power of Eru's light wound in soulstring. The soul endures, Nienna had taught, and Feanor had wrapped Eru's light in what endured.

"I was wrong. Morgoth was wrong. Manwë was wrong. The primordial was as necessary to creation as the light of Eru was. And it was only when the Void had broken, when the primordial met the light of Eru, that creation could awaken again."

"This is merely a set of baseless speculations," he demurred then hastily, when he saw my absorption in his narrative. "Nolofinwë shall be cross if he hears I have been theorizing again, and for good reason. While we live, let us live."

"I think you may have the right of it," I said truthfully, mulling it over anew in my mind.

"Pray, give it no further thought!" He exclaimed. "Nolofinwë does take umbrage if I carry on so with my hypotheses." He shrugged then wryly. "May I offer you another distraction? You may come to my forge, should you need a measure of peace from them."

"Peace?" I asked, startled by his choice of words.

He chewed his lip in consternation, before saying awkwardly, "I struggle with melancholia. I cannot find my place among them, even when I strive, even when they strive. The forge offers me a place to be." He shrugged again, a nervous tic of his I was beginning to notice. "Despite the best efforts of Indis and my father, I grew up a child that wondered about the mother that was lost to me. I suspect it engendered a sense of alienation in me, that I carried onwards. Many of my children and nieces and nephews enjoy their solitude without a fear of abandonment, because they have never not known where they belong. I envy them that."

I stopped walking, heart seized with fear that he had seen to the rotten core of me. He was looking at his shoes, awkward but bluntly sincere. He had only meant to speak of himself, I understood. He had not seen that I ailed too. 

That emboldened me to admit, "I struggle with melancholy. I was an orphan Fingon did not want. The crown came to me, but their family did not. I did not-" I sighed wearily. "I did not think I had a home. I did not think I was anyone's."

Feanor looked at me sympathetically. Then he said, tactless and plain, "It is what you think. I doubt it is the truth. You should speak to my brother. He has a way of placing these matters in perspective."

How could I tell a grandfather I did not know that my father had not wanted me? 

"You seem to be getting along with Findekáno," Feanor queried. "He has been taking you hunting, hasn't he?"

Fingon tried his utmost to get to know me better. I tried too, desperate. 

"He sees me as an equal, as a brother," I said haplessly, not knowing what I wanted from Fingon. If it had been validation I had sought, I had received it aplenty. If it had been welcome, I had had that too. 

"I am told that I was a terrible father," Feanor said philosophically. "I suspect very few excel at parenthood."

It was true, I mused. Very few excelled at parenthood. Galadriel and Celeborn had raised their daughter to dislike them both. Elrond hated his mother. Erestor had no kind words for his parents. Idril had loathed her father enough to betray their city. Celebrimbor had no unkind words for his parents, but he had no unkind words for anyone. 

Oropher and Maglor were the only exceptions I could think of. Thranduil had worshipped the ground his father walked on. Elrond and Elros had adored Maglor. I tried to picture Fingon as Oropher or Maglor had been, and failed miserably. 

"My father doted on me unceasingly," Feanor said abruptly. "I would wander Aman with Nerdanel to get away from his care when I found it oppressive, and then return swiftly when I found I missed him." 

Codependency, as Elrond had called the dynamic of the marriage of Galadriel and Celeborn. When Finwe had been murdered, Feanor had declared war. 

What made a good father? What made a good son?

\--------

Galadriel and I had found an ease in each other's company. I had never expected it to happen in my wildest dreams. She had learned to tolerate me, but I could not fathom that she could learn to accept me. 

"What is it?" Maglor asked sharply, when he caught me looking at her across the dinner table as we supped. He would usually sit beside Galadriel or Finrod, but he had chosen to sit beside me that night. 

"What changed her mind?" I wondered, fiddling with the carrots on my plate. 

"She had not the time to dwell on matters that had no import on her mission," he said plainly. "I doubt it was to do with you." Then his expression softened, and he added, "You met us when I was readying for the end and when she was readying for the beginning of her long and lonely watch. We had not the wherewithal to cultivate new bonds then." 

"Feanor asked you to speak with me," I assessed flatly. 

"What-" He shook his head. "My father is not in the habit of sharing confidences with others. Whatever you have told him will stay so. He has Telpe's memory for matters. He forgets anything that is not pertinent to the forge. No, Findekáno asked me to speak with you." 

My father. 

I swallowed, returning to the flute of wine I had lackadaisically been sipping at. White wine with a blush. Maedhros must be experimenting again with his vintners. I preferred the reds, but Fingolfin had a policy of serving only a white when we had fish. We often had fish, thanks to Galadriel's entreaties. I had not seen her eating fish in all the time I had known her on Middle-Earth and on Arda. I had not known her at all. 

"He could speak to me," I muttered, feeling foolish about the entirety of my inarticulable wants. 

"He does not know how to," Maglor replied. "He approached Artanis, for she has raised a daughter. Artanis sent him to me instead. I wish to help, if I can."

There it was, his customary plainness of speech and willingness to listen, that Elros and Elrond had gratefully spoken of at length, that I had envied again and again and loathed them for. 

"I don't belong here," I murmured, refusing to meet his gaze, skewering my carrots into smaller cuts. "I don't know why I am here. He did not want me. He has accepted me now, but he did not want me." 

I looked up, startled, when I felt Maglor's hand on my wrist. 

"You did not find yourself here because of Findekáno," he said gently. 

I shook my head, unwilling to think about that, because I knew what he meant, and I knew I wanted no part of it. Dwelling on it made me feel unworthy and guilty, for the name I had not wanted, for the forgiveness I had not dared asked for. Whenever I looked at Maedhros, apologies came spilling to my lips, but he remembered nothing. 

"Findekáno hopes that you shall give him the chance of a beginning." 

Fingon would try and then learn, as Círdan had, as Elrond had, as everyone else had, that I was too needy and frightened and I would then be found wanting.

"Russandol recently told me that our father is only a man. The authority I had prescribed him was not one my father knew to carry." 

Was Maglor trying to explain I might be disappointed in Fingon as he had been in Feanor?

"Findekáno cannot see his ideal of a son in you. He can only see you as you are." 

And I would not find in Fingon or in anyone else my ideal of a father. I would only see who he was. 

"I find myself melancholic," I blurted out then. "Lonely, in the midst of all. When you were alone, when you were wandering, how did you fare?"

"I was preoccupied with my mourning," Maglor said dryly.

Turgon had panic attacks whenever he tried to leave on a ride, fearing that he might return to all his family taken from him again. The years in his city had been lonely, as he had marked them die. Aredhel feared the canopy of the woods, remembering the dark forests she had wept in. Galadriel had worn away, as she fought for long ages of the world alone. 

The heart that bears every fate. The soul that endures. 

\----

After I endeavored to set aside my musings on what a father should be, I found Fingon delightful company. He was not given to dark moods, as Feanor or I was. 

He had a generous heart. 

He would patiently teach me to hunt and to fish, even if it had become quickly evident that I had little aptitude for those pursuits he dearly loved. He would invite me to his quarters for tea, for games of chess. 

"Apologies!" He said, laughing, when he trounced me yet again. "I am decent at this, you see. We must choose another game if you are to win."

I did not mind losing to him. 

"He seduced half of our army with his games of chess," Finrod commented, from where he had been larking about on the chaise in Fingon's quarters. 

The easy camaraderie my father and his cousins had did not fail to unsettle me, but I had a new solution to that. I would take to Feanor's forge whenever the pangs of resentment set in, whenever I found myself an outsider looking in. With reprieve only a few hundred feet away, I could afford to be curious about this man that had sired me.

"Half of your army?"

"The half my father had not seduced," Fingon said smartly. "You must know, Ereinion, that your grandfather was the most rakish rascal in Tirion. I would have spent weeks playing chess to seduce a soldier I had my eye on, only to find the cad in my father's bed the next day."

"Alas, only I inherited his miraculous powers of seduction!" Finrod lamented.

Fingon scowled at that, saying, "No carrying on about orgies while my son is here, Findaráto!"

My son. How easily had he said those words! He had not even noticed the significance of it. He continued teasing his cousin and I had to look away from Finrod's knowing glance. 

"You are merely jealous that you could not land Laurefindë in your bed."

Laurefindë. Glorfindel. Finrod had calculated my interest well. I blushed and glared at him. When I had first met Glorfindel, I had been starstruck. I had spent months mooning after him. Even Círdan had noticed. I had not been the only one. Many of our courtiers and ladies had tried to seduce Glorfindel. 

"Who would not want Laurefindë in their bed?" Fingon remarked. "Irissë was his friend. A poor sister did she make, in refusing to extol to him my many virtues in the boudoir." 

I blushed again; we had lusted after the same man. 

"Oh, you too?" Fingon asked me, laughing, of good cheer. "You have fine taste, Ereinion." He turned to Finrod to spare my blushes. "Tell us, cousin. Tell us of the magnificent Laurefindë."

"When I finally managed to get Laurefindë in my bed, I feared I would not leave the chamber alive. He was a ride and a half." Despite my mortification, I was laughing. "I jest not, Ereinion! He ripped out my hair and flayed my skin in enthusiasm! If not for Russandol conniving to take me off the scouting rotation for the next three months, my arse would have been done for! I was relieved when Laurefindë was done with me."

"Oh my darling cousin! Your poor arse! At least it was for the worthiest of causes! Do you think Turkáno tumbled him too?" 

"I wager Turkáno does not touch his cock unless Atarinkë is with him," Finrod said dryly. "Do you think Russandol managed to get Laurefindë in his bed? Laurefindë insisted on being the emissary to Himring ever so often."

"Lord Maedhros!" I exclaimed. "He does not seem the type." 

In all the time I had known Maedhros, he had not looked with interest at man or woman. I would know. I had watched him obsessively, in hatred, in guilt, in fear, in fury. 

"He took Mablung of Doriath to bed mere hours before he came to _my_ bed," Fingon rued. "When he had Hurin as a lover, the entirety of the gossip my spies brought me was how he was cavorting with the poor man in glade and garden." 

It was a sorrow that he had come to terms with, I could tell. There was more than mayhem and love in their midst, I realized for the first time. They had had to forgive each other too, for the times they had been flawed and had taken it out on their families. I began to see why Celebrimbor had always taken Galadriel's cutting words with kindness. 

"He has a type, just as my beloved sister has a type," Finrod commented. "You see, Ereinion, they find fetching men of unsurpassed valor."

"Silence!" Fingon demanded, laughing. 

I had not been the only one to find my father's myth fascinating. I felt a sudden outburst of affection for Galadriel. Why had she married Celeborn? I had asked Celebrimbor so often. Celeborn had many of Fingon's traits. When I saw Galadriel in Fingon's company these days, it was easy to notice her attraction to him. 

"Glorfindel had only taken women to bed in the time I knew him," I remarked. "There was a King of the Edain for a brief spell and he went to Gildor's bed when we were at war, but he did not seem one to turn to men when women were around."

"He was Sauron's lover," Fingon said gently. 

Was his gentleness for me, for how I had died with Sauron's mace in my chest? I could not bear to think of it. Fortunately, I did not have to. Sauron's lover? I was too shocked to speak.

"He ran after Sauron for years, in Valinor. It was initially a wager with our grandfather, that he could persuade one of the Maiar to bed him." Finrod shook his head. "Laurefindë was a creature of the heart. He fell deeply in love with Sauron."

Sauron had slain Finrod in a tower of song. Fingon's gentleness, I realized, had been for his cousin. I could not fault him. He had lived and mourned his cousin's fall. He had not known me at all. Yet, I hungered. 

"I suspect his keenness to run errands to Himring was to seek news of Sauron," Fingon said thoughtfully. 

"From Russandol?" Finrod asked, falling to bouts of laughter again, brow cleared of old tragedies. "Whenever has anyone gotten an answer from our cousin?"

"Tried to get him to talk _afterwards_ ," Fingon muttered, eyes full of mischief. "Silent as the grave he was." 

I scrunched my nose, my imagination balking at this father I wanted and a man I had spent most of my life hating, even if theirs had been a love canonized in lore and song. 

Hesitantly, I dared ask a question that I had often mused on. "When did they begin?"

"Macalaurë and Russandol?" Finrod asked rhetorically. "Oh, Macalaurë was in love from the beginning. He was a possessive hellion that scowled and bit anyone who dared touch his brother, as a child. I cannot say he dramatically improved later in his life, on this subject." 

"Artanis says that they were not lovers until the end," he continued. "They behaved as lovers long before they came to know each other in that manner, oblivious creatures that they had been."

Fingon sighed, and said, "Macalaurë was proud and selfish. He did not find men sexually fascinating. He was married. He was averse to incest. He was deeply possessive. And Russandol had more secrets than Varda's stars."

\---------------

Feanor took me as an apprentice. 

He was a good teacher, patient and kind, but his expectations were high. It exhilarated me to hear his rare words of praise. When he criticized, I did not take it to heart, because he spoke poorly of the work and never of myself. 

"He is a good teacher," I told Celebrimbor, when I found him at his desk in the corner of the forge that was his. 

"He likes teaching," Celebrimbor said. 

He stayed away from his grandfather, working on his diagrams and calculations for fantastical machines. He had been Feanor's best student. _Silver cannot outshine gold_ , he had said once, when I asked why he did not collaborate with his grandfather anymore. To be in Feanor's shadow, I fancied, was to condemn yourself to never leave the shadow behind. 

For the first time, I wondered if Celebrimbor had also known alienation in this family of theirs. 

"How are matters with Findekáno?" Celebrimbor queried. He was kind. He had always been kind. 

"Did you know if you had a place among them?"

"I sought renown and recognition away from them," he said, chagrined. "Why did you think I was in Nargothrond? Why did you think I went to Eregion? I wanted a legacy of my own, away from the doom of Mandos, away from Russandol's soothsaying and Artanis's hellwrought determination." He shrugged. "It was all that I wanted, and I found I reaped only discord and war with my pursuits." 

"Turin told me once, in Nargothrond, that I was foolish to run away from family." He put down his quill and came to my side. 

"Turin Turambar?" I asked, excited. "Turin, the dragonslayer?" 

I had worshipped his deeds of mighty valor as a boy. I had grieved for his tragedies. 

"He had been an orphan too, with neither name nor place, belonging to none. He came to me as you did once, with an ally's blood on his blade. _Make me a new sword_ , he said, and I gave in to Hurin's fate-stained son."

When I had gone to Celebrimbor with a broken blade, and challenged him to a duel, furious as I had been that his family wanted him and discarded me without a thought, he had been kind. He had seen the truth of my blade, of filicide, and had shaped me a mighty sword. He had called me Gil-Galad when I had struck him for calling me by a name I loathed then. He had stayed steady by my side, until he fell in Eregion. 

"The doom of Mandos did not delineate between the favored and the favorless," Celebrimbor continued. "To evil turned the work of my hands, and my legacy was already fated for me."

The Rings of Power.

"If I had not met Turin, I suspect I would have become consumed by hubris, by resentment, by alienation."

He embraced me then. I sighed and placed my head on his shoulder. I had not known how the wellspring of his kindness had been birthed. I had not known that his care was a choice. If Turin had not come to him in Nargothrond, would Galadriel and I have known Celebrimbor's unceasing kindness?

\--------------

I woke to the sounds of a furious argument in the hallways. Alarmed, I dressed in haste and went to investigate. 

"There is nothing to be gained in striving to understand!" Fingolfin was shouting vehemently at his brother. 

"He has begun to remember!" Feanor hissed. "How is it that you are blind to what comes after, Nolofinwë? He has begun to remember! If his memories can return, whatever he did to sunder the worlds and to create anew can also be distorted! We need to find out the secrets of the making of us!" 

"Let it be!" Fingolfin ordered. "Let it be, Fëanáro! Listen to me for once in your damned life!"

"You have never listened to me!" Feanor spat. "You ignore the signs of warning! And then you blame me for having seen them!"

"Paranoia has turned you to see shadows everywhere!" Fingolfin retorted. "It wouldn't be the first time, would it?"

Feanor fell silent, collapsing into the nearest chair, pressing a hand to his breast. 

"Fëanáro-" Fingolfin began, placating, regretful. 

"You shan't listen to me on this."

Fingolfin shook his head. He said quietly, "I regret the pain this causes you, Fëanáro. I shan't choose you over any of our children."

What was a father? I had wondered. And I discovered the answer, as Fingolfin chose their children over his brother. 

How often had they fought as bitterly as they did then? Their sundering had been the beginning of the doom, I had learned from loremasters. 

"Artanis believes his memories will not return in entirety," Fingolfin offered gently. 

"Artanis misses the forest for the trees."

"As do you, Fëanáro." 

"How can you be so complacent?" Feanor railed again, mustering the energy to shout. 

"It was not my complacence that started our war, Fëanáro. It was your inability to let things lie," Fingolfin said with cruel, perfect enunciation. "Let this be! Find another pursuit to obsess over, brother."

"He is not your son," Feanor said darkly, standing up, his fists clenching as if he was compelling himself not to strike his brother. 

Fingolfin smiled then, and there was only conviction in his voice when he replied, "Oh, but he is. You left him in my care, because a boy without the keenness to learn the pursuits you chose was of little use to you then. I took him. I raised him." 

"You did not know how to raise him!" Feanor shouted. "You paid no attention while he fell into his tutor's bed, while he courted the wrath of the Valar, while he started his rebellion without weapon or ally!" 

"Sons are not their fathers. Most are worse, some are equals, and the rare one surpasses," Fingolfin said quietly. I flinched upon hearing the words. Maedhros had once told me the same. 

"You trusted him blindly."

"And you did not trust him at all. You did not trust anyone to know better than you." Fingolfin laughed, though there was no joy in his voice. "You trusted only yourself."

"I was not the one that kept secrets! I was not the one who demanded faith in soothsaying and gambling!"

"He trusted me to cross the Ice for you. He trusted Artanis and Macalaurë to win his war," Fingolfin said coldly. "He trusted Ereinion to protect Artanis, as he trusted our brother in Tirion to protect Macalaurë. What, if not faith, would allow him to walk to his death with the conviction that they would win?" 

"You mean to do nothing," Feanor stated tiredly. 

"I mean to plan a wedding for Irissë and Tyelko," Fingolfin said. "You had best set aside all this and learn from me what a father's true duty is." 

"Cockiness shall be the end of you, brother." 

"So they said. And here I am!" Fingolfin said brightly. He sighed then, and went to embrace his brother. 

I walked back to my chambers. 

Maedhros had trusted me to protect Galadriel. At the end, it had been to me he had entrusted Elros and Elrond. He had not sent them to Galadriel or to Cirdan to Celebrimbor. He had trusted me to see to those that survived him. 

I tossed restlessly, and found no more sleep. 

\--------------

I had been in Fingon's quarters, watching him play chess with Galadriel. 

"Perhaps you should not play chess after two glasses of wine," I told her, as she was soundly trounced by Fingon's aptitude for the game. 

"Perhaps you should play with my son instead," Fingon suggested. "He is better than you at this, but so is a newborn babe, I daresay." 

The novelty of hearing him call me his son had not worn off.

"It isn't my fault that you are the best tactician among us," Galadriel muttered, moving her King from checkmate again. 

"How did you learn?" I asked Fingon curiously. 

"How does one learn anything? Macalaurë and I were fond of playing chess. We were fiercely competitive, because we were vying for Russandol's attention. We sought to best each other." Fingon shook his head, with a chagrined laugh. "Our cockfighting made us passing decent at tactics and command. It certainly brought us Russandol's attention. He delegated his command and we planned his battles for him."

"Findaráto looks to be the lazy one," Galadriel said mildly. "What with his orgies and lounging about like an unkempt kitten. In truth, Russandol and my father were the laziest of us. They delegated everything that they disliked doing and called it efficiency. My mother was an able ruler, and my father spent his days as a patron of the arts. Russandol spent his time breeding horses and growing wine. Celeborn had met them both and found their lack of passion for military campaigns mystifying."

"Celeborn was unhappy if he came home after a patrol without an empty quiver," I remarked. 

"A necklace of skulls," Fingon said cheerfully, winking at Artanis. "I am certain that you were easy to woo, bloodthirsty terror that you are." 

"Claws and skulls have always suited me the best," Artanis said, moving her King away from another checkmate. "Needed to differentiate myself from Irissë, you know."

"Well, she is to be a married woman soon," Fingon teased her. "I doubt you shall have to compete with her for lovers."

"She has only had Tyelko in her bed, monogamous mundanity that she is," Galadriel said, scrunching her nose in distaste. Celeborn had slept with others, but Galadriel had kept her vow of fidelity. I refrained from pointing that out, despite her sarcasm about monogamous mundanities. " _Tyelko_! I could never fathom what she saw in him."

"Do you remember our first hunting trip in Formenos? Irissë asked us all who we wanted to bed at least once. Everyone except you said Laurefindë. There truly is no accounting for your tastes."

"I had seen Laurefindë sparring. He had no notion of his own strength. I did not think sleeping with him would be conducive to my womb or intestines or throat."

Fingon and I looked at each other, remembering Finrod's tale, and burst into laughter. 

"What?" Galadriel demanded. 

"Your foresight scintillates," I promised. 

There was a knock on the door then. 

"Come in!" Fingon called. 

It was Maedhros. He stepped in, before faltering at the sight of me. There was knowing in his gaze. My fists clenched on the armchair rests and my heart had not tapped as staccato even when facing Sauron. What had he remembered? 

"Ereinion," he murmured, looking at me with pained recognition. "I named you."

I had hated him for my father's death. I had hated him for discarding me to Círdan. I had hated him for the melancholy I had carried all my life. He had given me a name and a crown, without giving me a family. I had been powerful, and I had been cruel to him in the ways I could be. And when I had desperately sought to make amends, he had been dying. 

I looked to Fingon and Galadriel to intervene, imploring silently, for words were beyond my grasp. Galadriel shook her head and nudged Fingon to return to their game of chess. 

"If you had a son, you told me that he would have been named Ereinion," I said finally, and my voice was a scratch. "What do you remember?"

His memories would not return in entirety, Galadriel had stated confidently. It would only be a patchwork of impressions in the end, incomplete and without nuance. And that I had taken as my good fortune unlooked for. 

"You loathed me for what I had done to your father," Maedhros offered bravely. He looked at me as he had looked at me in Arda. He had looked at me so even when I had been cruel. "You said that you grew up alone, unloved, because I had taken away your parents both. I begged you for forgiveness. You did not grant me. Then one day, you did. I went to my death knowing that you were the greatest of our Kings." 

There was a visceral ache in me that I recognized as the hunger that had accompanied me lifelong, craving, needing, seeking belonging. I loved my father for the man he was, for his generosity of heart. I had not known him before. I had known Maedhros. He had held me when I had been a babe. He had beleaguered Círdan ceaselessly to ensure that no expense was spared to educate me, to give me every advantage of our bloodline from afar. It was me that he had claimed and named and made a King of. I swallowed, thinking of what he had once told me. _Sons are not their fathers. Most are worse. Some are as the same. And the rare one surpasses._ The meaning in his gaze then had been irrefutable. 

"He changed our banners and heraldry after your fall, cousin," Galadriel said quietly. "He turned the flames of our grandfather's golden sun to silver. Elros carried his banners to Númenor. My father-", her voice faltered, but she pressed on. "My father returned after the War of Wrath to fly the banners in Tirion. When Ereinion rode to Mordor to battle Sauron, his shield was silver and his banners too. Elrond flew the banners in Imladris and Telpë in Eregion. I sailed to Valinor at the end under those banners."

He was staring at me, as if afraid to look away. I rose to my feet unsteadily. He took a step closer, and reached out a shaking palm to cup my jaw, hesitant, steeling himself to be struck away. How many times had I lashed out at him? How many of those times did he remember? Did he remember that he had forgiven me? Did he remember that I had loved him before the end? 

What did it matter if he remembered the pieces of our history? He had chosen to be brave once more, in daring to draw near, in waiting for me to choose to strike him. 

I closed the distance between us. The hunger naked in his eyes was one I had seen in a mirror all my life; it was the hunger to be chosen, to be found worthy, to be wanted. Emboldened by the revelation, I dared embrace him. He fell into my arms as a puppet with its strings cut, without uttering a word, and I held him, terrified, when he began sobbing. 

Nobody had turned to me for comfort before. I did not know what to do. And he-

I remembered him cleaning his sword after Maglor had stormed away in grief, after their bitter argument. I remembered how composed he had been whenever I had flung vitriol at him, even when I had worn a crown and he had been a beggar. When he had been ailing, he had met his failing health with detachment. When he knew he was gradually losing his mind's moorings, he had accepted it with grace. Another in his place might have taken their own life, or dared death. What was breath, without health and sanity? _The soul endures_ , they had taught him. And he had taught us in turn that it is the heart that bears every fate. 

And he wept in my arms. I swallowed, fearful of what I might ruin. 

"Your move," Fingon told Galadriel, nudging her to their game, to give us privacy. 

It was my father's voice that grounded me. He would have intervened if he feared that I might harm. He trusted me with this. He trusted me with the man he had died for. I steeled myself to gently lead us out to the courtyard, away from the eyes of others. 

What could I say? Where would I begin?

I pressed a clumsy kiss to his brow. I was frightened by how he wept, his desolation stark in how his hands clutched at me before hastily letting go. He was as frightened as I was, I realized. 

"It is only me," I said softly, wishing I had his eloquence, wishing I had Maglor's ability to speak the right words to him. I hesitated, before saying tremulously, "It is only Ereinion."

"Ereinion," he said between racking sobs. "Ereinion."

I had said the right words. I was crying silently too, as I bore the weight of him in my arms. Nobody had called my name with greed, with desperation, as he did then. 

"I am here," I said, striving to infuse every word with my vow. 

His hands came to clutch me then, and he dared to map my face with trembling fingers. The loveliness that our bards had written odes to had escaped him. His face gleamed with tears and his eyes were red. How many times had I spitefully wanted to see him so? How many times had I wanted to reduce his composure to tatters? 

"You have your father now," he said quietly. 

How often had I accused him of taking my father away? 

"I had you then," I spoke, and honesty eased my guilt-worn heart. I dared thumb away his tears. Seeing the loss writ plain on his features, I hastened to add, "I have you now." 

"Ereinion," he said, and the raw, unguarded awe in his voice was a tender bloom. 

Overwhelmed I took a step back, to regain my bearings, but he did not permit me, clutching my arms. 

"Stay, please," he asked. He had not asked me in a world of Eru's make. 

"As long as you need," I promised. 

I held him to me, counting his heartbeats, relishing how the tension in him eased as he settled in my arms. The potency of being needed drugged my head. 

"I cannot remember all that you were," he murmured. "Memory is matter too, and most of the matter that constituted me was unspooled in the merging of the void and the chaos."

"We bore heavy griefs then. There is little to be gain in remembering the past. We have time now, Lord Maedhros."

"I don't know how to wear that name," he said quietly. There was no sorrow in his words.

_The glory and the nothing of this name is yours_ , he had said once to me.

He trusted us, though he remembered not a whit, to love him and to protect him. In his place, I would be terrified of abandonment and betrayal, to live in a world where everyone else remembered. In his place, Feanor would be paranoid, suspecting it all to come to a crashing end in blood and grief. 

It would have been tawdry to call him by the appellation I craved to. 

He changed the subject then, to my studies with Feanor in the forge. He was an excellent conversationalist, and I could not despise him for being what I was not when his attention was on my every word and gesture, intense and unwavering. 

"There you are!" Maglor had come in search of his brother. 

It was morning. There were maids in the courtyards bustling about the washing lines. There was Feanor scurrying away to the forge chomping on a slice of bread as he walked, nose glued to a scroll as he muttered to himself. There was Aredhel and Celegorm riding back home from a long hunt, laughing and in love. 

"Apologies!" Maedhros exclaimed. I was intensely grateful that he did not move away from the embrace I held him in. "Brother, I hadn't intended to-"

I took a closer look at him in morning's light. His face bore the marks of weeping. His hair was in utter disarray and he looked exhausted to the bone. He had thrown a set of robes hastily over his nightclothes. He had been asleep when he had remembered and had come rushing to me. 

"Hardly noticed," Maglor said easily, as he had once kept up conversation without a blink when his brother had been struggling to tether his mind to sanity. 

His eyes were keen as he took in the state of us. Whatever he saw must have settled his worry, because he nodded to himself and drew nearer. A spike of familiar jealousy curled in my gut when I watched him press a kiss to his brother's cheek before briskly running his hands through Maedhros's hair and trying to salvage it into neatness. He did not endeavor to move his brother from my embrace, settling himself to work around it. 

"What a frightful sight you make," he muttered. "And here I thought I had netted myself a catch." 

I grinned at the chiding. And I wished someone had chided me so. I had tried to track down my father's other misbegotten get for years in vain. I had thought that if I saved a brother or a sister and raised them, they would grow to speak to me as I had seen Maglor speaking to his brother. 

"You must be hungry," Maglor continued. 

"You are obscenely omniscient," Maedhros replied, and there was a tender fondness in his voice. 

"I master complex music everyday. My mastery of you is a trivial matter."

"As you say," Maedhros replied cheerfully, staying one of his brother's hands from where it was occupied with neatening kinks and tangles, pulling to press a kiss to the knuckles. "When you are at your most scathing, I know you are content." 

"My cup overfloweth."

"Cousins! Ereinion!" Fingon stepped out into the courtyard and came to join us. He cut a striking figure in his fine leathers and cambric. Trailing him was Galadriel, in a chemise wrapped over with one of Fingon's robes, heedless of the picture she made to the gossiping maids. 

She scowled at the maids, before saying, "You look terrible. Did you both spend the night here?" 

"Don't worry, Artanis. We did not hear you scream," Maedhros teased. 

"He is the screamer of the two of us," Galadriel muttered, pointing at Fingon with a displeased expression. "Cannot take him anywhere without chancing discovery of half the village." 

"You merely need to embrace your exhibitionism, Artanis," Fingon said, unruffled. "Arafinwë passed it on to the rest of his children. I doubt you are the exception."

"I am exceptional," she retorted. 

"That you are," Maglor said affectionately, concentrating still on his self-appointed task of braiding. He had deft, sure hands. Despite myself, I was fascinated by the artistry of his work. 

"Findekáno, you must learn to braid as he does," Galadriel ordered. 

"Ah! And here we wondered why you had him in your bed," Fingon said wickedly. "It certainly could not have been his wit."

"I like his wit," Maedhros offered. 

"You are a masochist."

"I would have remembered that!" 

"No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't." Fingon's expression was shadowed for an instant, before he continued cheerfully. "Artanis insisted that we send for food."

"You must be hungry," Galadriel said, with uncustomary softness. 

"I fancy game." 

"For breakfast?" I blurted out, scandalized. 

"We knew you might. Irissë seared a rabbit from her hunt," Fingon said. 

The maids came out to swiftly set up our fare. There was bread and butter, and soup of leek that Galadriel scowled at, and fine cuts of seared meat. I felt a profound sense of loss when Maedhros moved from my hold to the breakfast table.

"You can have the rest," Galadriel told me, moving to the meat. 

"Marsh rabbit," Fingon noted, pouring himself tea. He came to my side, and asked gently, "All is well, Ereinion?" 

"Yes," I said clumsily. "All is well." Then, thinking that he asked of his cousin's welfare, I hurried to add, "I did not say anything to worry him. I was careful." 

"He was with you. I was not concerned for him," he said plainly and the sincerity he wore crushed me. Seeing my disbelief, he continued, "I am asking if all is well with you."

"All is well," I promised my father. He gave me a bright, happy grin and then dragged me to breakfast, where Maglor was mediating between his brother and his cousin fighting over the last slice of meat.

"Mine!" Galadriel exclaimed. Then, winking at me, as if welcoming me to share in a secret that only we knew of, she said, "My precious!" 

"Hmm?" Fingon asked.

"You are relics," she told her cousins smartly. "You would not know. Ereinion and I, were immersed in modernity and know all about this."

"Ungoliant was the first to use those words, cousin," Maedhros told her, laughing. "She would call Melkor so."

"Shut up!" Galadriel scowled. "I should have done more to mangle and destroy your memories."

"Oh, but then I wouldn't remember how I loved you," Maedhros said sweetly, and she yielded to press a kiss to his cheek.

"Weeping turns him hungry," Maglor offered me quietly then. His gaze was sharp and assessing. "When he seeks you, may I ask you to keep an eye on him? He does not often regain his awareness of the present when he struggles to chase emotion to memory's scraps." 

He trusted me with his brother. I remembered him watchful and afraid to entrust anyone else to approach an ailing man he loved. I remembered him intensely possessive of his brother's company and attention. I remembered his cutting coldness whenever I had spoken cruel words birthed from my lifelong resentment of the family that had not wanted me. 

He trusted me. 

"Of course," I scrambled to say. "Anything." 

"Refrain from hunting rabbits to feed him afterwards," he advised, mischief bright in his gaze. "Your father tells me that you make a poor hunter." 

"I blame Círdan," Fingon muttered. "Really, Russandol, did you have to send my son to your lovelorn mariner?" 

"He had a palace nobody wanted to attack," Galadriel replied. "We were in short supply of those after the three of you threw the war for Beleriand." 

"Findekáno and I had nothing to do with that. We had a plan to win," Maglor interceded. "The rout was of our strategist's making."

"It must have been a brilliant and subtle plan," Maedhros defended himself, even if it was clear that he neither cared nor remembered. 

"Afterwards, my husband told me that he hoped our daughter would not inherit her brain from my side of the family." 

"Well, she did," Maglor said plainly. "Celebrían roused Valinor to war, went toe to toe with Manwë, took Arafinwë's bodyguard as her lover, and ceaselessly flirted with me." 

This sounded unlike the Celebrían I had known. She had been a meek, sweet thing, her father's darling, who had not wanted to marry Elrond because of his mixed ancestry. 

"Flirted with you?" Galadriel exclaimed. "I shall have to avenge her honor with a pillow fight if you dared touch her!"

"She was your daughter, Artanis," Maglor spluttered, scandalized. 

"You sleep with your brother!"

"That cannot be helped. It is a solemn duty I undertake to spare the rest of our world."

"You had the right of it, Findekáno. I must have been a masochist," Maedhros said with feeling. 

"You hosted masked orgies and made your guests pay a token of sixty-four lashes before you permitted them to enter your vaunted corridor of wonders," Galadriel reminisced. 

"Sixty-four is a perfect square. Symmetrical and pleasing." 

"It is the truth!"

"Macalaurë would not have allowed me to host masked orgies. He screamed at the maid yesterday for daring to fold my clothes."

"She was sniffing your breeches."

"See, Artanis! I rest my case. Masked orgies would have ended with heads on spikes," Maedhros said, unruffled. 

I watched my father watching them. When he caught me looking, he grinned and shrugged, saying, "Architects of all on which we tread, squabbling at breakfast." 

He reached across easily to neaten the lapels of my robes. 

\--------------

I went out of my way, with bravery I had not known I possessed, to invite Maedhros on my long walks. He was occupied with his work, but I saw a tremulous hope settle on his shoulders each time I invited him, each time I came back after he had to decline. Persistence, I had learned from the example of Maglor, was the true key to happiness. 

And persistence paid off. 

One fine morning, he came to the forge, where I had been reworking one of Feanor's designs in alloyed iron more brittle than any I had worked with before. 

"You are improving rapidly," Maedhros commented, idly glancing over my crafts in metal and stone. 

There were runes inscribed carefully on many of them, and I hoped he would not ask me to explain why I had chosen the words I had. He looked up at me, curious as ever, but seeing my face, he smiled and returned to his perusal of crafts, his hands delicate as he inspected them. 

Feanor had begun to let me have free rein, in choosing my materials, even if he strictly set the curriculum of designs. I had never had a better teacher suited to me. His authority I saw as an indication that he cared to better me than he had found me. His obsession with work meant that he was not given to chit-chat, and he had not the least interest in enquiring after my emotional complexities. Work was the antidote he believed in, and he offered it to me. 

"I was on my way for the first of the honey harvests," Maedhros said. "I wondered if I may have your company. I see now that you are occupied with your work."

"No, no!" I hastily cut in. Seeing his reluctance to draw me away, I added, "I have never seen honey harvested. Let me come with you, please." 

We set out together. He pointed out this and that to me as we walked. He knew the land he had shaped, the name of every bird and flower, the make of every mound and rivulet. 

"Macalaurë tells me that I had apiaries before," Maedhros was saying. "I cannot imagine how that could be, with the clime he described. He won't tell me more, asked me to rediscover it all by myself again, said it would keep me preoccupied and out of trouble." 

"Do you like honey?" I asked curiously. 

"I enjoy creation and cultivation," he said pithily, laughing at my glare. "Apologies, Ereinion! I have been lighthearted since you agreed to accompany me, and I am afraid my excitement has eroded my wit. Did we have times as these once?" His curiosity was a wistful thing, and I knew I could lie to spare him. 

"Every now and then," I promised him, and the brightness of his gaze tore my heart. 

"I hoped," he admitted quietly. "I hoped." 

I did not have Maglor's knack for saying the right words to him, but I knew I would do my utmost to learn. 

Right then, I said what I had only spoken to him in my most foolish and frivolous dreams. 

"The night we made amends was the night I first knew the meaning of belonging. I was glad that you had named me and claimed me."

"I merely named you. The glory and the nothing of your name was yours to hew." 

We fell into silence again, as we arrived at the hives. He made his way to the fence, finding an excellent vantage point to view the proceedings of the apiarists, every inch of him an indolent prince come to see his domain, betrayed only by how cheerfully the men came to greet him.

"And we wondered why the bees were restless, Prince Nelyafinwë!" 

"The bees know my brother is elsewhere," Maedhros said happily, unafraid when they brought him a comb still bustling with bees. 

"Come here, Ereinion," he called to me. "Let me show you how to scrape the comb." 

In the gentle winds, against sunless skies, he seemed impossibly young and innocent, attired in robes of coarse, blue cambric. He was patient and careful as he taught me, his voice holding steady discourse. 

When I hesitated to bring my hands to the comb, wary of the bees, he coaxed me, "I am here, Ereinion. With me, now."

I expected the bees to sting us, but they did not, even as they buzzed and skittered on our hands restlessly. 

"They have not stung us," I said, wondering. 

"We have not harmed them." 

When we had scraped enough, he handed the comb to the waiting apiarist, before turning to me. 

"Try it," he urged, pressing the crust into my hands. He was eager, to share this with me. He was prattling on about the flavors of honey and how they were influenced by the flowers in season. He was speaking about licorice and inflorescence and root systems that were interconnected. I suppressed a grin and ate a crumb.

"Well?" He demanded, keen, trembling with enthusiasm. 

"It bears the flavor of licorice," I lied to him. It was too sweet, and I had never liked honey. 

"Isn't it marvelous?" He exclaimed, and returned to his chatter about the various experiments he meant to run to persuade the bees to seek the fennel in our gardens. 

There had been a boy, hungering for scraps of home, left with a name that he knew he was unworthy of. There had been a man, crowned and alone, left with a heart that bears every fate. I ate more of the crust. The hunger that had consumed me from within receded to a faraway place. I knew it would not return. 

And there was this.

"What are you thinking of?"

"Freedom's battles passed from fathers to sons," I said quietly. I had my father's face, but when I looked at my mirror, the hunger in my gaze I had seen in another man. 

In surety, I found boldness. In the hope dawning on his features, I found my courage. The first of his gifts had been a name. 

What meant a father to me? What meant a home? What meant family? What did I deserve? The answers sang to me joyously. 

"I-" he cleared his throat, at a loss for words, for the first time in our interactions. He smiled at me then, and attempted to collect himself again, shy but brave, eyes lustrous with emotion. "I wanted you to accept me."

"I did. I do," I soothed him, clasping his hands in mine to reassure a man who had never needed another's approval. 

"I thank you," he said, his formality at odds with the brightness of his laughter, with the relief that was evident in the slim lines of his frame. 

Under the canopy of cloudless, clear skies, as the cornfields swayed about us on winds bearing the scents of storax, myrrah, and cedar, we stood on the land freedom's battle had won. 

Even if all things were altered in make and matter and memory, the soul endured. 

The soul endures, and it knows its way home. 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

>   
> Sunset is maintained at a [Dreamwidth repository](https://the-song-of-sunset.dreamwidth.org). It is a set of stories that can be read as standalone or as a full alternate universe.


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